Total pages in book: 184
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
I whip my eyes up and, fisting his shirt at his chest, I ask, “How did you figure that out?”
His features are at war with each other. Half of them amused and the other half annoyed. His jaw, on the annoyed team, clenches. “Because it isn’t that hard to figure out. Because I’ve already dropped the ball with you once when you fooled me into thinking that you were dating my twin. And because I know how your twisted little mind works.”
I fist his shirt harder. “You really need to let that dating thing go, okay?” His jaw clenches again, but I keep going, “I fooled you. Deal with it. You fooled me too. We’re even. And second, aren’t you?”
“Aren’t I what?”
“Into soccer because your brothers are?”
“I’m into soccer because it comes easy to me.”
“But you don’t even like soccer,” I say urgently.
“So?”
“So you could be doing something else. You could be doing something with the books and—”
“No.”
“But—”
“No.”
“But, Stellan—”
“Fuck no.”
I glare up at him, breathing harshly. “I don’t get it.”
He’s breathing harshly too. “You don’t need to get it.”
“I do,” I tell him.
“Yeah, why?”
“Because…” I try to shake him, but he’s so strong and solid that all I manage to do is pull him even closer until we’re breathing against each other, our breaths fighting. “Because I love you, you idiot. I care about you. I want you to be happy and soccer doesn’t make you happy.”
A particularly hard gust of air escapes him at my words.
Like I gave him wings with my words and then brought him back down to the ground.
By saying those three words.
Which is so ironic because they make me want to fly.
He grabs my face then, tightly, tilting my head back. “You want me to be happy, yeah?”
I nod.
“So then I want you to stop with the love bullshit and get a clue,” he growls, his body pressing down on me. “This isn’t a good thing, Dora. Loving me is not a good thing. I have said this to you a million times. You need to smarten up and move on from a man like me. That’s what we are trying to do here before you go marry my fucking brother, all right? We’re not trying to fall in love, we’re trying to make you fall out of it. So if you want me to be happy, you will stop messing with things you don’t understand and let it the fuck happen.”
Let it happen, is it?
He wants me to fall out of love with him. When every time I say it or allude to it, it looks like I’ve given him the world. It looks like I’ve made him the most relieved and satisfied and the happiest man alive.
“By you fucking me?”
“Love is a drug,” he tells me. “It’s an addiction. The best way to break an addiction is to indulge in it so much that you get sick of it. Or you overdose and they take you to the hospital and pump it out of you, whichever comes first. So yeah, by fucking you. And fucking you so much you either get sick of me or stroke out and realize I’m fucking toxic.”
But you know what, fuck him.
I’m so mad I could bite him.
“Give me my ring back,” I order.
A thundering expression crosses his face. “No.”
“Give it to me.”
“No.”
I smack his chest. “If you want me to marry your twin brother, then give me my ring back.”
Coming closer, he pushes his nose against mine. “You will get a ring when you marry him. You don’t need this one.”
I smack his chest again. “I need it to keep men like you away.”
His fingers flex around my face. “You have a man like me to keep men like me away.”
I scratch his jaw then. “What’s so bad about you, huh? Other than the fact that you are an asshole and a liar.”
“Everything,” he growls, tugging on my hair. “Everything is bad about me.”
I can see he believes that.
He absolutely believes it.
And you know what, I believe him too.
I believe there’s something bad in him. Something that makes him think he’s a bad brother, a bad man. But more than that I believe that whatever it is, it’s more harmful to him than it can ever be to me.
So when I see the self-loathing so thick on his features, my heart squeezes and I fuse our mouths together. When I should be leaving, I hold on to him so tightly with my entire body that our edges blur and mesh together.
And even though he wants me to leave him, he holds on to me just as tightly. Tighter, in fact. So much so that he’s crushing me into the snowy ground while at the same time, keeping me plastered to his chest. And our kiss feels so desperate.